Training camp is still a few weeks away for the Lakers, yet several of the players gathered in El Segundo on Wednesday afternoon to shoot, lift and play some pick up ball.

As Shannon Brown explained in the above @LakersTwitvid, he was joined by Luke Walton, Sasha Vujacic, Ron Artest, Jordan Farmar, Josh Powell and Adam Morrison in addition to some D-Leaguers (to round out a 5-on-5 run).

Prior to the full-court action, some of the players went through lifting and general strenghtening activities with Lakers Director of Athletic Performance Chip Schaefer (Walton and Brown specifically), others got some shots up (Vujacic and Farmar) while others worked with assistant coach Brian Shaw and advance scout/assistant coach Rasheed Hazzard on running L.A.’s offense (Artest and Brown).

“It’s just good to get back in here,” said Walton. “I think we’re all excited about the coming season and eager to get ready to go.”

It won’t be long, since the first preseason game is only three weeks away on October 7 against Golden State.

We sat down with Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak on Thursday afternoon primarily to discuss the signing of Shannon Brown, and also to touch on the Ron Artest deal … plus the team’s continued hope to retain the services of Lamar Odom.

Clearly, Kupchak is still pretty busy.

He detailed what the Lakers like about Brown’s game, explained why the 23-year-old was acquired in the first place, and opined on why signing Artest put the team in a better position to ink Brown and Odom. Kupchak also said that while L.A. would like to expedite the Lamar talks, the organization has “way too much” respect for the versatile swingman to rush the process: “We’re hopeful that a day goes by, two days or maybe the weekend and we’ll have more clarity,” he concluded.

When you watch “Forrest Gump,” it takes just a few seconds to realize that Tom Hanks can do a bit of acting.

Observe President Obama give a speech, tune in to see Albert Pujos hit a baseball or listen to Jay-Z perform one of his songs, and your conclusion makes itself in a flash.

That’s about how long it takes to notice that Shannon Brown is some kind of a freakish athlete, and upon further consideration, literally one of the world’s best.

Surely if you observe the raw, explosive nature of Brown’s body movements going up and down the basketball floor, it’s easy to imagine an extensive weight lifting and training program that’s been followed for years and maximized in the NBA. After all, this is the guy you saw raise up to destroy a Mario West layup attempt in February and climb over the outstretched arms of Chris Andersen for a hammer dunk in the Western Conference Finals.

His 44.5-inch vertical – measured prior to his rookie season at the Lakers’ predraft camp – was in part of gift of genetics, but it would be assumed that Brown’s well-muscled arms didn’t just appear from nowhere. We assume he lifts some serious weights. Right?

Not really.

In fact, late in the season, Brown explained to us that while he did do some lifting in high school and at Michigan State, he has basically stayed away from weight training since entering the NBA.

Huh?

“Whatever Shannon accomplishes or doesn’t accomplish in the NBA is not going to be for lack of athleticism, and the risks involved with trying to be too clever with him would be ridiculous,” explained Lakers Director of Athletic Performance, Chip Schaefer. “We’re very open ended and we like to listen to the athletes, so when Shannon came … I had no problem with him sticking to (his program).”

Schaefer, who’s in charge of the team’s strength and conditioning, instead worked to supplement Brown’s routine with some fine tuning. Accordingly, to get a better understanding of why Brown sticks mostly to push ups and does little to nothing with his legs, we sat down with Schaefer for a podcast:

Up next in our run of post-championship locker room series is Shannon Brown, who came to the Lakers midseason from Charlotte before realizing his childhood dream.

I’m really numb, to be honest. My teammates were holding me back telling me not to cry. It’s just something you work so hard for. This is why you play the game, to be a champion on the highest level of basketball, to be considered one of the greatest teams ever to do it … I can’t explain it. I’m numb man. I’m numb.

Sure enough, Brown was particularly emotional while trying to sum up his feelings, leading in part to our calling up his father Chris to really understand Shannon’s journey.

For a perspective that only a father could have, we dialed up Shannon Brown’s dad Chris to talk about his son’s journey from Maywood, Illinois to the NBA Championship, including a nugget about Shannon breaking the glass after a freshman-year-of-high-school dunk.

During a coming-soon podcast we did with Shannon Brown’s father Chris, we learned that during Shannon’s freshman year, his father received a call from Proviso East High School asking him to come on down to the Maywood, Ill., location.

When Chris, a police sergeant, showed up, he saw that his son had smashed one of the school’s backboards with a dunk. Yeah, he was a bit concerned about the prospect of paying for it, but he couldn’t deny a bit of pride crept in.

As it were, Proviso East – home of Michael Finley, Doc Rivers, Reggie Jordan, Brown’s teammate Dee Brown and others – saw a 6-foot something freshman, not a visiting monster like Dwight Howard, smash the glass.

Coming to the Lakers in a midseason trade alongside Adam Morrison for Vladimir Radmanovic, Shannon Brown contributed more than most expected, particularly in the playoffs.

His numbers in 18 regular season games were limited by 7.6 minutes per game, in which he averaged 3.2 points, 1.1 rebounds and 0.6 assists. In the playoffs, his minutes jumped to 13.1 per game, and he averaged 4.9 points, 1.2 rebounds, 0.6 assists, and more importantly, helped defend bigger point guards like Deron Williams and Chauncey Billups.

Below are some highlights from his presser:

- Brown opened by saying that he didn’t even know if he was going to be in the NBA before the season began, so participating in a championship parade was “unbelievable, a blessing.”

- Coming back to the Lakers is: “Real important. We have another chance to win another championship and continue to get better.” Quite simply: “I want to be back.”

- Brown said playing with Kobe, Pau and Lamar made his job a lot easier in terms of hitting his shots: “I’ve always felt like I had those abilities, but the system gave me a chance to show it. Playing with guys that attract a lot of attention make it easy. Those were wide open shots. I just got a chance to play basketball and it felt good.”

- More love for the team: “This team showed me so much love from the beginning, it was easy for me to feed into and buy into what was going on.”

- Brown said his teammates wanted him to get into the dunk contest after seeing his hops … In fact, Brown competed in the McDonald’s High School All-American dunk contest with LeBron James, who said he was going to compete in the 2010 contest. Remix possible.

- Brown referred to himself as a “Throw in” to the trade between Charlotte and the Lakers (from Charlotte’s end), but Mitch Kupchak didn’t seem to consider that to be the case. In fact, Brown said that Kupchak looked at Brown for specific things, asked for them, and Brown delivered.

- More on what Mitch and Phil told him: “Just continue to work on my overall game, learning the game, my shooting, defense, just continue to work hard. I think they believe I’m gonna do it.”

- On Derek Fisher’s old hops: “I got a picture of him dunking on Iverson.”

- Brown reflected on how much it meant to win a championship being from Maywood, Illinois, just a few blocks away from the United Center where Phil Jackson won his first six rings: “I told Phil that I was looking through the screen while the games were going on watching Mike and Scottie and all those guys doing their thing, going out in the back yard trying to emulate them … (Now I’m thinking I get to play for arguably the greatest coach ever to do this. It’s a great situation. I’m just happy.”

The Popcorn Machine on Lakers.com is our regular podcast where Lakers Reporter Mike Trudell talks to Lakers players, coaches and broadcasters as well as national and local media members. If you haven’t checked it out yet, click here to go to our archive page.

In the latest episode of the Popcorn Machine Lakers guard Shannon Brown talked to us about his Final Four bound Michigan State Spartans, detailing his time and experience playing under head coach Tom Izzo at MSU, all while his six-month old son, Shannon Christopher, sat on his lap.

Listen below or head over to the Popcorn Machine homepage to check out all the previous episodes. If you like what you hear you can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes by clicking here. Enjoy.

Shannon Brown averaged four points in 9.4 minutes per game while spending the first 41 games of the season with the Charlotte Bobcats, before being traded alongside Adam Morrison for Vladimir Radmanovic.

One of Brown’s best games as a Bobcat came in Charlotte’s 117-110 OT win in Los Angeles on Jan. 27, when Brown scored 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting (two threes) with four rebounds and two assists.

As such, Brown has a unique – and streamlined – perspective on Tuesday’s Lakers-Bobcats game in Charlotte.

“We just need to come out, play hard and be really aggressive,” said Brown after L.A.’s shootaround. “Because the Bobcats pride themselves on playing hard. When I was in Charlotte, L.A. didn’t quite match the intensity, gave up too many open looks, but I think it’ll be a different story tonight.”

Brown went on to describe Charlotte’s improvement since the additions of Raja Bell and Boris Diaw from Phoenix, and talked about some of their more effective sets, but more than anything else simplified things down to one word: Effort.